A Crane Dance
by ImagineI
Summary: Guy reminisces as he tries to sleep and Marian does not escape his thoughts for one moment...


This is inspired by Ludovico Einaudi's piano piece, 'The Crane Dance' from his album, 'Nightbook'. Please listen to the track, if you can, as you read this : ) Thank you.

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"Would you like anything else, m'lord?" A cold blade to the neck maybe… a noose around Hood's… a riddance of this guilt and the cowardice to hunt Hood… because it would hurt _her_.

"No. Leave." I kept my voice clipped, kept my inward struggles private and glanced at the door to show the footman his services were no longer required.

He took the platter of half eaten food from my table and offered to refill my goblet with wine. I nodded. He poured.

He left.

I was alone.

Story of my life…

How foolish you are, I thought. How spoilt… to have servants, a home, food and warmth and yet…

I felt unsatisfied.

I pulled my black gloves off and examined the small nick of a scar at the bottom of my left thumb, reaching for my goblet with my right hand and taking a swig of the bitter liquid, watching the crackling, terra flames in the hearth.

My eyes blurred as the fire ate its way through the logs, right until my wine had been drunk and my head was heavy enough for some excuse of sleep.

How could I sleep without a drug of some sort? When her tear-filled eyes were strewed across the mental memoirs of that seething blaze of a night…

Her childhood haven, no doubt, torched by my own hand.

What had I achieved?

Nothing.

What did I have?

Exhausted, lame power and wealth; the prize of a village's hate; second place against Robin of Locksley.

Hah- I was the current lord of this domain and yet, still, I was of Gisborne… a place I had never even been. A black lion, roaring silently, adorned the coat of arms… I knew that much.

I sank lower into my wooden chair and felt the heavy weight of my sins purge any slight feeling of pride or strength…

I was weak.

My eyelids began to droop and I was sparsely surrounded by the memory of her sweet smell. I fell into the hypnagogic state that arrested conscious thought, releasing my goblet and letting it tumble around the floor, dropped from my grasp.

Sitting here in the gradually dying heat, leathers increasing the mugginess, I was called to answer tens of questions from my conscience. I justified each one with my reasons and my regrets. The arrows of my bitter, bitter regret always set aim to my heart at around this time of night; just when I had the time to relax and not be Vasey's 'side-kick' or 'crony'.

Her delicate fingers stroked my hand in my imagination and I recalled the firmness and solidity of her body as I had stolen so many holds on her frame…

I recalled the three kisses I had coveted from her soft lips… recalled the dark, unyielding thoughts I had had during those immortal seconds… Of what I could do to her to hear her sigh and pant…

HJer stubbornness, her determination… Her confidence with me, something nonexistent with others around me aside from the Sherriff and, frustratingly, Hood. I could elicit fear from his swooning, outlaw ducklings and from pretty much anyone else… those were things that roused me also…

But she seemed determined to bring down my guard that I had so carefully built over the painstaking years.

Being feared allowed a lot less contact and therefore hurt than open compassion.

I heard my breathing slow, felt my body slouch. The tenebrous feeling of dishonour and wretchedness began to leisurely slither inside me, mercilessly yanking tiny muscles and making me ache from my shoulders, through my chest, stopping to rest on the seat of my guts.

Then, in quick succession, flashes of backhanding her father and watching her hair chopped so savagely; enduring her flinches whenever I so much as brushed past her; the hate in her eyes, always stabbing at me just as I had found I had stabbed her-

The ominous beast in my belly took a bite under my ribs to punish me for that brutal act.

My eyes shot open.

Slumber would not come. Not for all the wine in England.

I pulled myself up in my chair and looked out of the window.

Her face was not there.


End file.
